With Truth, and Peace, and Love, shall ever shine About the supreme throne Of him, to whose happy-making sight alone When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb; Then, all this earthy grossness quit, Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit, Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time*. AT A SOLEMN MUSICK. BLEST pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy; i In Milton's manuscript, written with his own hand, fol. 8, the title is, “On Time. To be set on a clock-case."-T. WARTON. Individual. Eternal, inseparable. As in “Paradise Lost,” b. iv. 485, b. v. 610.—T. WARTON. 5 Milton could not help applying the most solemn and mysterious truths of religion on all subjects and occasions. He has here introduced the beatific vision, and the investiture of the soul with a robe of stars, into an inscription on a clock-case. Perhaps something more moral, more plain and intelligible, would have been more proper. John Bunyan, if capable of rhyming, would have written such an inscription for a clock-case. The latter part of these lines may be thought wonderfully sublime; but it is in the cant of the times. The poet should be distinguished from the enthusiast.-T. WARTON. Yet still, I think, Milton is here no enthusiast: the triumph, which he mentions, will certainly be the triumph of every sincere Christian.-TODD. 1 That undisturbed song of pure concent, &c. The undisturbed song of pure concent" is the diapason of the music of the spheres, to which, in Plato's system, God himself listens.-T. WARTON. 678 Which careful Jove in Nature's true behoof Of sheeny Heaven, and thou some goddess fled, Or wert thou that just maid, who once before Or that crown'd matron sage, white-robed Truth? Let down in cloudy throne to do the world some good? Or wert thou of the golden-winged host, To scorn the sordid world, and unto heaven aspire ? But, O! why didst thou not stay here below To stand 'twixt us and our deserved smart? But thou canst best perform that office where thou art. Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child, This, if thou do, he will an offspring give, That, till the world's last end shall make thy name to live. h To turn swift-rushing black Perdition hence, Or drive away the slaughtering Pestilence. Among the blessings, which the "heaven-loved" innocence of this child might have imparted, by remaining upon earth, the application to present circumstances, the supposition that she might have averted the pestilence now raging in the kingdom, is happily and beantifully conceived. On the whole, from a boy of seventeen, this Ode is an extraordinary effort of fancy, expression, and versification: even in the conceits, which are many, we perceive strong and peculiar marks of genius. I think Milton has here given a very remarkable specimen of his ability to succeed in the Spenserian stanza. He moves with great ease and address amidst the embarrassment of a frequent return of rhyme.T. WARTON. When every thing that is sincerely good And perfectly divine, With Truth, and Peace, and Love, shall ever shine About the supreme throne Of him, to whose happy-making sight alone When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb; Then, all this earthy grossness quit, Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit, Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time". 5 10 13 20 AT A SOLEMN MUSICK. BLEST pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy; In Milton's manuscript, written with his own hand, fol. 8, the title is, " On Time. Το be set on a clock-case."-T. WARTON. Individual. 5 Eternal, inseparable. As in "Paradise Lost," b. iv. 485, b. v. 610.-T. WARTON. * Milton could not help applying the most solemn and mysterious truths of religion on all subjects and occasions. He has here introduced the beatific vision, and the investiture of the soul with a robe of stars, into an inscription on a clock-case. Perhaps something more moral, more plain and intelligible, would have been more proper. John Bunyan, if capable of rhyming, would have written such an inscription for a clock-case. The latter part of these lines may be thought wonderfully sublime; but it is in the cant of the times. The poet should be distinguished from the enthusiast.-T. WARTON. Yet still, I think, Milton is here no enthusiast: the triumph, which he mentions, will certainly be the triumph of every sincere Christian.-TODD. The 1 That undisturbed song of pure concent, &c. undisturbed song of pure concent' is the diapason of the music of the spheres, to which, in Plato's system, God himself listens.-T. WARTON. Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee ; That we on earth", with undiscording voice, To live with him, and sing in endless morn of li AN EPITAPH ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WIN THIS rich marble doth inter The honour'd wife of Winchester, Added to her noble birth, More than she could own from earth. m That we on earth, &c. Perhaps there are no finer lines in Milton, less obscured by conc affected expressions, and less weakened by pompous epithets and i sample style are conveyed some of the noblest ideas of a most sublime de metaphors and allusions suitable to the subject.-T. WARTON. Besides what her virtues fair, &c. b. Howell's entertaining Letters, there is one to this lady, the I decciose of Winchester, dated March 15, 1626. He says, he a abdhat Nature and the Graces exhausted all their treasur mood of female perfection."-T. WARTON. |